Colour maps were painted on top of the displacement maps - many dark brown and dark green blobs :)


A render with all maps applied in a simple studio set up.


Displacement close-up.


Some viewpoint grabs from the kitchen. Look at this cool Porsche knife!


I love this stool. Anyone knows who designed it? Shoot me a mail!


Gaggenau rocks!



This is the light setup. A large area light, right in front of the windows and 4 omni's. Notice the camera at the right.


The scene seen through the camera.


Kitchen render. I didn't have to use super-high sample values, because everything is going to be blurred.


I had to render the fly in a separate pass. The differences in scale made it somehow impossible for Max to render everything together. Everything went unbelievable slow, when I tried it. The fly measures about 1 cm, while the entire room has about 7m.


Both passes combined together. The background is blurred. There is also some DoF on the fly pass. This helps to direct the focus to the flies head. I spend a lot of time finding the right camera position. This is important for a good composition. Since the head should be the focal point, I searched for lines that can guide the viewer's eye to the head.


This is the final piece. I've added some lens distortion and decided to mirror the image. It might be just personal preference, but I think it does support the composition even more.

In the western hemisphere, everyone is used to read from left to the right. And I guess this is true for looking at pictures as well. So in this case, the viewers' eyes are entering the picture from the left and are guided directly to the flies head.


Head close-up, cropped from the high resolution image I worked with


I hope you enjoyed this making-of. If you have further questions, don't hesitate to contact me.